Marketing Cloud Predictive Journeys Announced at Salesforce World Tour in New York

Today, Salesforce announced its Marketing Cloud Predictive Journeys, with Predictive Scores and Predictive Audiences. With this new product, marketers can fuse CRM and marketing data with relevant contextual data such as web browsing activity and email
“Whether you’re looking to collect behavioral data and infer preferences, predict the next best content, or deliver personalized messages across channels and devices, we’ve got the tools to achieve your marketing goals and boost ROI.” states Salesforce.

In the age of the connected customer, engagement must be real-time and relevant. Marketers want technology to tell them who to target, when to target them and in what channels with what message. They need to make decisions in the moment that are based on a multi-dimensional view of the customer and include their true interests and intent, not just channel preferences. However, given the massive volume of customer interactions, it is not feasible for marketers to analyze each piece of data for insights and make individual decisions. Marketers simply can’t keep pace with every single customer and all of their interactions with a brand.

According to Forrester Research1, just 36 percent of customer experience leaders say that their companies always track what happens during customer interactions. While there are customer experience tools in existence today, they are a bit like looking at a map at home before leaving for a trip. At one time, having a map was the best way to navigate, but the static data can’t deliver the optimal route. It can’t adapt to events that happen along the journey, like traffic jams or a road closure, to bring a person to their destination in the best way possible

Today, Marketing Cloud Predictive Journeys, with Predictive Scores and Predictive Audiences, can deliver dynamic “Waze-like” customer experiences that go beyond answering the question of what content to send to each customer to engaging customers in a smarter way by predicting their likelihood to take a specific action.

“Marketers want to put the customer at the center of their thinking and allow them to define each moment that matters. Now marketers can create smarter journeys that deliver the right content exactly when the customer needs it,” said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. “With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Predictive Journeys, marketers can now go beyond simply meeting customer needs, to anticipating and greeting them at the next step of their journey as they arrive.”

● Predictive Scores: Predictive Scores use data science to learn and score a customer’s likelihood to engage. For example, an online retailer can use Predictive Scores to determine a customer’s likelihood to open an email, unsubscribe from an email list or make a purchase. In addition, marketers can access new dashboards that include the overall score of individual customers aggregated into audience segments. This gives marketers the power to truly understand the behaviors that drive customer engagement.

● Predictive Audiences: Predictive Audiences is a smart audience segmentation tool that unifies customer data by grouping audiences based on their Predictive Scores, creating highly targeted segments. For example, if a customer has a score indicating a high likelihood to unsubscribe, the retailer can launch a re-engagement journey with content proven to deliver better outcomes. As people begin engaging with the new content, their likelihood to unsubscribe goes down and they are automatically put into a new journey that takes them down a path leading to a higher score.

Comments on the News

● “Rue La La delivers the most-coveted brands and serves up style inspiration to the next-generation shopper,” said Murali Narayanaswamy, VP, Marketing and Strategy, Rue La La. “With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, we will be able to create and execute smarter customer journeys based on understanding member browsing and shopping behaviors. This will allow us to forge a stronger bond with our loyal customer base.”

● “Customers, empowered with new technology and inbound channels, now outpace many businesses’ ability to respond. Marketers need systems that orchestrate and improve the effectiveness of customer dialogue across any channel,” wrote Rusty Warner, principal analyst, Forrester Research in the October 2015 report entitled, “Combine Systems of Insight and Engagement for Contextual Marketing.” “Rearview analytics — understanding how campaigns performed, how customer segments responded — is not sufficient to drive decisions that affect in-the-moment customer interactions. Advanced analytics methods predict and optimize customer behavior and enable marketers to proactively engage with customers.”

The Marketing Cloud is the world’s leading marketing solution. It enables marketers to build a single view of the customer, plan and optimize the journey, deliver personalized content on every channels and device and measure the impact on their business. Leading brands like DonorsChoose.org, Mattel and Rue La La harness the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to connect with customers in a whole new way.

Pricing and Availability

● Salesforce Marketing Cloud Predictive Scoring and Audiences are currently in beta and are expected to be available in the first half of 2016.

● Predictive Scoring and Audiences will be included with the Salesforce Marketing Enterprise edition and as add-on to Pro and Corporate editions. Pricing starts at $125 per month.

Additional Information

● Learn more about the Salesforce Marketing Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/marketing-cloud/overview/